We provide atmosphere to make better cricketers: Bharat Arun

The India U-19 team is set to travel to Australia to take part in a quadrangular series which starts on April 5. The teams, which include Australia, India, New Zealand and England, will take on each other once in a round-robin stage, followed by the semi-finals and the final. Siddharth Prabhakar and Gokul Gopal from Cricbuzz.com spoke to the India U-19 team's coach Bharat Arun. Arun, a former Tamil Nadu and India all-rounder, talked about the preparations for the tour and also discussed various other topics related to the young cricketers.

Under 19 Cricket is a key phase of transformation of players to the big stage. As a coach, what role do you play in identifying and grooming the talents?

Our main role is to groom the talent. Finding the talent is the job of the selectors. If you look at most of the players in the Indian team, they have all gone through the Under-19s. This is a feeder where you have identified the talent and then you provide them the atmosphere to make them better cricketers by giving them the international exposure.

The U-19 players are still in their formative years and may not have the same level of maturity as the seniors. Also, since they are teenagers, there are a lot of things that go through their mind. What challenges do you face while coaching them?

In fact, these Under 19 cricketers are pretty smart. Our job is to empower them with the right knowledge and take them to a level where ultimately the role of a coach should become redundant. We cover every aspect of the game - physical, technical and tactical and also improve their mental toughness. This game that they are currently playing (During our conversation with the coach, the U-19 players, in their practice session, were given various match scenarios) is a match simulation going on purely to work on the tactical side of their game. There are experts in every field who provide the right inputs to these players. So, naturally, anybody who's talented at that age and gets the right inputs has the better chance of succeeding.

Participating in T20 Leagues gives the players a chance to rub shoulders with international cricketers and they also get to look at the modern techniques employed by foreign coaches. As a coach do you feel that T20 cricket helps the players or does it act as a detriment, affecting their techniques?

Twenty20 is also a form of the game. One needs to adjust to all forms of the game and also the mind-set has to be familiarized. The earlier you get into mind-sets, the better it is to adapt to different situations.

As a coach, how do you help the players balance all the formats of the game?

Each one's potential and temperament is different. Not everyone from the T20 side goes into the Test team. So, we identify that potential. Basically, we train them to be good Test cricketers. Once you are trained to become a good Test cricketer in all the aspects, you will be able to adjust to other forms of the game. It is not the other way round.

Certain players have a natural way of playing the game and some of the coaches, for example Muralitharan and Mendis' coach, feel that their techniques should not be altered, but only fine-tuned to improve their game. Do you also believe in a similar philosophy

Let me give you an example. It is like your hand-writing. Take five people and all five have different writing styles and all five can be good. If your hand-writing is bad, you improve on it. As a kid, you wrote four lines. You could be writing for 30 years and your hand-writing could still be the same. If your writing is bad, unless you practice with an intent to improve, you will never improve. It is not necessary to change your style of writing but to get your style as close to the basics as possible. Cricketing skills are also similar - You don't change the style of a player but ensure that the style is more close to the basics.

There is a general feeling that there is scarcity of spin bowlers in the domestic circuit. Do you feel the same or are there good spinners in the pool?

There is a healthy talent of spin bowlers in the domestic circuit. There is a good mixture of both spin as well as pace in our country.

Looking at the quadrangular series, Australian wickets will definitely be on the faster side and offer more bounce. Are there any additional methods that you have incorporated in the camp to get used to the Australian conditions?

The wickets that we practice on in this camp are with a lot more bounce and we also use hard plastic balls on cement tracks to get that extra bounce. So this gives them the feel of what they are going to get in Australia. Once they understand what is happening, it is in their technique to get used to the conditions and rise up to the occasion.

Playing in Australia can be tough for youngsters as they have to handle different kinds of pressure and the local crowd as well as the media can be hostile to the visiting teams. How should the players cope with these?

It is a part of the game and as I said earlier, we work on the mental aspect of the players and they are well equipped (to handle pressure on and off the field). The bottom line is to concentrate on the process which decides on how you fare. The process is determined by the players and we teach them to stay focused on that. So, these things can be handled (by them).

Kookaburra balls are being used for all your practice sessions. Are these being used keeping in mind the upcoming series in Australia?

It depends on what tournament you are playing and where you are playing. We have used Kookaburra balls for the entire duration of this camp. But this is not just for the Australia series. We have also used Kookaburra for the previous quadrangular series which took place in India.

You were an all-rounder in your playing days and the general observation with the all-rounders these days is that they tend to improve on a certain skill at the cost of the other. Your thoughts on this?

It depends on what level of an all-rounder you are. There are bowling all-rounders and batting all-rounders. Very often you don't find cricketers who are equally talented in both (batting and bowling). They might be good bowlers with exceptional batting skills (or the other way round). This is the case world over. If you look at Jacques Kallis, he is skilled in both departments. But of late, he is not bowling as much as he used to earlier. It might also be due to the fact that he has crossed 35. Fast bowling has a shelf life and when a player reaches certain age, he will channelize his skills more into batting.

Does the current U-19 team have genuine all-rounders?

Yes, there is an all-rounder - Akashdeep Nath, but he is more of a batting all-rounder. We also have a few players who can contribute with the bat and the ball and we will look to maximize their potential. People who are equally good at both are a rarity, not only in our country but world over.

There are certain players in the U-19 team who have also played at the Ranji level. For example, Virat Kohli played some Ranji games before making it to the junior India team. Do these players have a slight edge over the others who have been selected from the U-16 and U-19 levels?

Virat Kohli was obviously talented and that was the reason he was picked for the Ranji team. Most of the guys here have, sometime or the other, been part of their state squads or at least have been in the state camps. It does help to be with the senior players - you learn from close quarters, especially the mental aspects of the game.

Apart from the on field aspects, there are various other things that the youngsters can learn from watching the senior players and incorporate their work ethic. Your thoughts on this?

By watching them, you can learn a lot of things. They lead by example. If one needs to go up the ladder, this (work ethic) is an aspect one should imbibe from them. It does have a positive influence. You mainly learn the mental aspects of the game from other cricketers. But as far as the technical aspects are concerned, you have to figure out what works for you rather than what works for somebody else.

Profile: Bharat Arun, currently the coach of the U-19 Indian team, was a burly all-rounder who represented Tamil Nadu and India from 82-92. Though he was not able to make a mark in national colours (4 ODIs and 2 Tests), he was one of the more prolific cricketers for Tamil Nadu in the 80s. He has a tally of 229 wickets (First class and List A) and has also contributed 4 FC hundreds and an equal number of fifties with the bat. One of his centuries came in a 249 run stand with WV Raman in the Duleep trophy final in 86-87. Previously, he also served as a fast bowling coach at the NCA (National Cricket Academy) in Bangalore.